ShangLuda Admirable film.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

libertysanders This could have been a good, although not great flick IF its producers had resisted including the mandatory "love story" component.Sinatra was a crooner, never an actor, who was able to get by and even be entertaining with a good supporting cast. He has one here with Steve McQueen as the standout.Gina Lollobrigida was never anything more than a pair of boobs with legs.These two could never have handled a GOOD script. Their personal chemistry was zero, and the painful, stilted meanderings that pass for their love scenes are downright painful to watch.Fortunately we now have the technology to spare ourselves such things. I gleefully advance through every scene with Old Blue-Eyes and Boobs Walking.Confine your viewing to Sinatra and his Kachins and you actually have a pretty good movie.

MartinHafer "Never So Few" is a bad film. While it's supposed to be about the guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in Burma during the war, too little of the film is devoted to this and way too much to a stupid and overly talky romance. Think about it...in Burma is an Italian bombshell (Gina Lollabrigida)...in the middle of Burma...yes, THAT Burma! Not only would such a woman NOT be in Burma, the fact she's an Italian (and we WERE at war with Italy at the time) never seemed to matter to anyone. Too often instead of action, we see Miss Lollabrigida in fancy designer gowns or naked in a bathtub! Heck, you'd have a hard time even remembering it's a war picture...so much is devoted to this silly and limp romance. As for the hero, Frank Sinatra, he just seemed kind of bored by all this...as did I. The bottom line is that Sinatra made a ton of great films...and eventually he had to make a stinker...and this one is it.

Spikeopath An allied guerrilla unit led by Capt. Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra) deals with the Japanese army and warlord controlled Chinese troops out in the Burma jungle."In the hills of North Burma, gateway to the vast prize of Asia, less than a thousand Kachin warriors, fighting under American and British leadership of the O.S.S., held back 40,000 Japanese in the critical, early years of World War II. It has been said NEVER have free men everywhere owed so much to SO FEW".Killer Warrants and The Unprecedented War.Directed by John Sturges and featuring Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Peter Lawford, Brian Donlevy, Gina Lollobrigida, Richard Johnson and Paul Henreid. Never So Few it's fair to say has a iffy reputation, originally conceived as a rat pack war film, it has some great strengths and some annoying weaknesses. The story itself is great, a part of the war that deserves to have been portrayed on the big screen, but why the makers didn't exorcise the whole romantic thread remains not just a mystery, but nearly a film killer.As lovely as Miss Lollobrigida is, her whole character arc, and the relationship with Sinatra's stoic Reynolds, is surplus to requirements. It serves absolutely no purpose to defining other characters or for narrative invention. This strand of the story carries the film to over two hours in length, without this strand it's a film of 90 minutes focusing on the brave souls who fought in the Burmese conflict. Which is what it should have been.When dealing with the conflicts, both outer and inner, the film does excite. The wily Sturges knows his way around an action scene and all the efforts here are gripping. Cast are fine and dandy, with McQueen dominating his scenes, Johnson the class act on show, while Sinatra, once he gets rid of the fake beard, shows his knack for tortured emotion to the point you just can't help but root for him even when he's being pig-headed (not a stretch for old blue eyes of course).Tech credits are mixed, the studio sets are easily spotted, but conversely so are the real and pleasing location sequences filmed in Ceylon. The Panavision photography (William H. Daniels) is beautiful, a Metrocolor treat, but Hugo Friedhofer unusually turns in a lifeless musical score. All told it's not hard to see why it's a film that divides opinions, it's very episodic and that romance drags it something terrible. But still strong merits exist and it at least gets the core of the real story out in the public domain. 6/10

Gornzilla Plenty of spoilers so be warned. The main point is, Steve McQueen stole every scene he was in.It's more hokey and not nearly enough camp. I reckon in this, The Age of Internet, every Tom, Dick, and Harry off-the-street can recognize sloppy casting (hey, all Asians look alike!) and bad sets (Burma jungles look just like California forest).I was watching Sinatra, with a beatnik beard, an Aussie hat, and his pet monkey, hang out with his best pal, an English Gentleman officer. A best pal always gets it, especially when they're a Fine English Gentleman with a Monocle (tm).Frankie kicks his beautiful red-headed girl to the curb for Gina Lollobrigida, and punishes Gina with his acting. I thought he was great in "The Man with a Golden Arm" but he's no Elvis in this one. Take the Elvis comment however you want to.Speaking of back monkeys, Frankie has a monkey on his back in this movie. Not the same kind of monkey as "Golden Arm", but this time he gets the monkey off his back. Well, the Japanese (fighting with American rifles and machine guns and driving American jeeps), kill the monkey. As Black Flag nearly said, "I've got a monkey on my back and it's not my imagination".The director, John Sturges best known for "The Great Escape", did us a favor and Peter Lawford wasn't Frankies best pal -- no hokey English accent. Oh, and word is, Sammy Davis, Jr was set to be in the movie. He had the gall to say he was a better singer than Sinatra. Sinatra kicked him to the curb, too.Dean Jones, the Shaggy DA, fights Charles Bronson -- who's playing a Navajo. I ask, "How come George Takei isn't playing a Burmese soldier? Oh, maybe this was made when Star Trek was on the air".Then Takei makes his appearance! This movie came out in 1959. Totally my mistake because Sinatra looked a little haggard.Whenever any of the Japanese, Italian, Chinese actors playing the Kachin natives of Burma were shot, they'd apologize to Sinatra for dying in their "me so horny, me love you long time" dialect.Eventually Frankie sneaks across the Burmese border, over to China. There were renegade Chinese soldiers, who slaughtered 34 American soldiers in Burma. This made Frankie mad. Very mad. So he takes the passed-out-drunk Chinese platoon hostage without firing a shot.The only shots fired are Frankie killing officers. He realizes he's in trouble for doing this, plus crossing a border, so he sends Steve McQueen out to slaughter the still drunk unarmed prisoners. Steve's glad to do it. It's no Mai Lai Massacre but it still brings in a "tsk tsk" from American GI Management and Frankie and Gina run off to be married, or as he puts it, "keep you pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen". Really.